by Jeff Crook
Mog led the way through the towering gate and into the first outer courtyard. Here between the first and second curtain walls, they were met by a hawk-faced dwarf bearing an enormous, two-handed warhammer. His meticulously groomed beard lay in a profusion of curling copper ringlets across his broad steel breastplate. As Tarn approached, the dwarf stamped down a narrow stair leading down from the battlements of the first wall.
"It is good to see you, Captain Axeblade," Tarn said wearily as he gazed around, taking in the arrangement of the fortress's defenses with a quick glance. Dwarves lined both outer curtain walls and stared down into the courtyard. Strict discipline held their tongues, but Tarn knew they were waiting to hear the results of the battle. He was not yet ready to speak openly of the disaster, though.
The outer defenses of Pax Tharkas consisted of two curtain walls that completely blocked the mountain pass. The two outer walls were too far apart to bridge, but narrow enough to provide a killing field for any attackers unlucky enough to become trapped between the first wall and the defenders on the second wall. The first gate was reached by a ramp leading up from the valley below. The second wall was higher than the first, as the road into the main fortress climbed up into the mountains. Beyond the second wall, the two massive square towers of Pax Tharkas rose majestically into the night sky, looming like black bulwarks with their narrow windows winking with torchlight. A third wall, taller and broader than the first two, was pierced by a massive iron gate and defended the pass between the towers.
The fortress was one of the wonders of Krynn. It had been built to guard a narrow valley through the Kharolis Mountains, which connected the high plateau of the elven woodlands with the wide plains lying before the dwarves' mountain home of Thorbardin. Dwarves and elves had built and garrisoned it together as a sign of peace between their two peoples, but that was long ago in another time. Now Pax Tharkas was a fortress on the northern frontier of dwarf lands, a buffer between Thorbardin and the troublesome north.
Captain Axeblade led Tarn and his party through the main gate and into a broad, paved courtyard beyond. The courtyard lay in a bowl-like valley, deep in the shadows of the gigantic towers. Here Tarn saw the preparations for war were continuing even at this late hour. Donkeys brayed beneath their loads, while the caves dotting the eastern slope glowed like red eyes from the forge fires within. The dwarves guarding the walls watched the king and his party pass then turned back to their duties. Tarn’s silence told them all they needed to know. They looked now to the north, their commanders quietly telling them to be on their guard for the attack most felt was sure to come. Tarn ground his teeth in his beard. He wanted to say something to dispel their fears, but he would not lie to them, and the truth was too grim, too fresh in his memory.
“I must see General Otaxx Shortbeard,” Tarn said to Captain Axeblade.
The captain nodded and led them across the courtyard into the east tower.
“I don’t like crawling in here like a whipped dog,” Mog whispered harshly as he and Tarn waited in the general’s study. General Shortbeard was one of Tarn’s oldest and most loyal commanders, one of the few Daewar who had not followed Severus Stonehand on his mad quest to retake Thoradin in the years after the Chaos War.
The general’s quarters were located on the second level of the east tower of Pax Tharkas, but his office was within the great shaft that had been built during the War of the Lance to house the dragon mount of the commander of the red dragonarmies. The shaft had once pierced the tower from its base to its top, but the dwarves had since roofed it over and divided it into its proper levels once more.
The general’s office was spartanly furnished, as befitted an old campaigner. His desk had once been a door, looted from some ruin or dungeon during his youth. Fitted with iron bands and rivets, marred by axe blows that had since been lovingly polished, it sat atop a pair of wooden chests. An iron dragonhead ornament in the center of the door held an inkpot in its gaping mouth. A book lay open on the desk, the page marked with an ornate silver dagger. A canvas-backed chair, much sagged in the middle, stood behind the desk, and trophies of old battles hung on three of the stone walls-an ogre’s wolf-toothed club, an evil knight’s broadsword decorated with skulls, an elf’s delicate but deadly longbow. A pair of ancient wooden chairs dating back to before the Cataclysm completed the room’s furnishings.
“No disrespect, Thane,” Mog whispered, “but it was wrong of us to slink in here like gully dwarves. The lads on the walls were looking to you for encouragement.”
“I’ve no encouragement to give them, Mog,” Tarn snapped. “What did you want me to say? Half of them had friends or relatives in Qualinost. Shall I tell them how their loved ones were buried alive? Or drowned? I don’t know which is worse. I can’t get their faces out of my mind. I can’t stop imagining all the ways they could have died.”
“They’re warriors. They knew what might happen when they chose their lot in life-to die and to see your friends die. We all learn to accept it. You should have told them the truth,” Mog grumbled. “You owe them the truth.”
“What? That their kith and kin died horribly for no good reason?" Tarn snarled.
“You should have told them that they died honorably and their deaths were not in vain,” Mog said as the door opened. He lowered his voice. “They won a great victory.”
A stout dwarf stopped short within the doorway. “Victory?“ he exclaimed. “Do my ears deceive me?” He entered, his round face flushing crimson above his spade-shaped beard. “They told me you’d been defeated!”
“Shut the door, Otaxx!” Tarn barked, glaring at the dwarves crowding the hall outside. Every word he’d said to Mog had probably been overheard and was already spreading like measles through the fortress. He gnawed at the filthy ends of his straw-colored beard while the general closed the door and locked it with an iron key.
As he turned and crossed the room, General Otaxx stared first at Tarn then at the Captain of the King’s Guard. Mog only shook his head, while Tarn avoided his gaze entirely.
“What happened?” Otaxx asked he as he lowered his rotund bulk into the creaking canvas-backed chair.
When Tarn didn’t answer, Mog hesitantly said, “We’re not sure.”
“We’re sure enough that no one survived,” Tarn said in a low voice trembling with suppressed emotion.
General Otaxx’s breath escaped his lips in a long sigh. He leaned back in the creaking chair, which threatened at any moment to split apart at its canvas seams.
“We don’t know that for certain,” Mog amended. “There could have been survivors, but we never found any. We tried to get away-er, get back here as soon as possible. The woods were crawling with the remnants of Beryl’s army.”
“Remnants?” Otaxx’s face brightened. “Beryl is dead, her army scattered?”
“So we hope,” Mog said. He quickly recounted what had happened in the tunnels, their discovery of the drowned city. “I found one of Beryl’s scales floating in the flotsam along the shore of the new lake. It was not some old dried scale that dropped off her body naturally. It was tom out of her flesh, by what force I cannot begin to guess.”
“Whatever it was that flooded the city must have also killed her,” Otaxx ventured.
“We don’t know that for certain either,” Tarn snarled. He rose to his feet and began to pace the small chamber. “She may only be wounded. In truth, we know almost nothing. We don’t know why the city was flooded or what happened to those defending it. We don’t know how many of Beryl’s soldiers were killed or if they are still under any kind of central command. We don’t even know for sure if Beryl is alive.” He stopped before the door and slammed his fist into it so hard that the center wooden panel split down its entire length. He seemed not to even notice, for he immediately resumed his pacing. Blood dripped from his knuckles onto the flagstone floor.
“I cannot allow myself to hope that the Great Green Bitch is dead,” Tarn finished.
“If you had no hope of defeating her, why did you aid the elves?” Otaxx asked with a frankness that might have been traitorous had Tarn been any other king. His commanders and generals knew that Tarn valued frank advice, even if it disagreed with his plans.
Still Tarn spun and glared at the portly general, anger flaring in his violet eyes.
“I had no other choice,” he said, repeating the excuse he’d been practicing since they left the Qualinesti forest early that morning. He felt weary to the bone. He’d had no sleep in almost two days, but that was little more than an inconvenience. He’d gone far longer without rest in the days after the Chaos War, when the survival of his people had lain in the balance. He felt as though there were a palpable force trying to restrain him, to surround him and smother him, plucking at his elbows and tugging at his sword belt. Even now, he sensed it. It felt as though there weren’t enough air in the room for all three of them to breathe, as though each breath were a struggle.
“I aided the elves because I had no other choice,” Tam repeated wearily. “To not aid them when they came begging at my door would have been immoral. Besides, since when has an elf ever begged aid of a dwarf? I could not pass up the opportunity to forge an alliance between our two people in this time of danger. And I wanted a chance to strike a blow at Beryl and her minions and also at the Dark Knights.”
“Then you did hope to defeat her,” Otaxx shrewdly observed.
“The elves’ plan was a good one. It could have worked. For all we know, it did work,” Mo said, a smile creasing his unkempt black beard.
“Their plan was foolish, and I should have seen it. Some madness blinded me,” Tarn said, waving his hands in the air before his face as though he still felt his vision and his judgment clouded. “Aiding them in their escape was the right thing to do, but helping them fight Beryl with arrows and ropes, that was more akin to catching a bird in a snare.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking.”
“You can’t trust the elves, I always said,” Otaxx murmured as his eyes strayed to the elven longbow hanging on his study wall.
“Elves!” Tarn growled huskily. “I wish to the gods I had never listened to them. If Gilthas himself were to stick his pointy head through that door, I’d chop it off.” Snarling an oath, he slapped the pommel of his kingsword and resumed his seat in one of the antique wooden chairs. The chair looked like a sentimental attempt at a throne. There was distinct elven craftsmanship in its woodland motifs-oak leaves and acorns and unicorns passant. The sight of it made Tarn’s stomach turn.
Yet it was unfair to blame his failures on the elves, and Tarn knew it. This only made him angrier. He had no one to blame but himself. How could he go back to Thorbardin and face those who had lost so much beneath the waters of doomed Qualinost?
“I must return to Thorbardin,” Tarn sighed.
Otaxx clucked his tongue and shook his round head ruefully. “You know what you will find there, my king,” he said. “The Hylar thane will seize this opportunity to challenge your authority. It’s just the sort of event he’s been waiting for.”
Tarn stared darkly across the desk at Otaxx, but said nothing.
“Perhaps it would be better to wait… a couple of days, no more, of course. If there are survivors, we should give them time to find their way back here,” Mog offered. “We can send out search parties. Maybe, with confirmation of Beryl’s death, we can lessen the impact of the news.”
“Lesson the impact?” Tarn asked incredulously. “Do you hear yourself? Thousands of dwarves died because I foolishly went against the will of the Council of Thanes.”
“But if Beryl truly is dead-” Otaxx began.
Tarn silenced him with a look. “I can’t put this off,” he said. “I’ve failed, and thousands of dwarves have died as a result. Let no one speak of what happened to the elf city until I have spoken to the Council of Thanes.”
“There are already rumors, my thane,” Otaxx said.
“Deny them,” Tarn ordered.
“Yes, my thane,” Otaxx said, rising from his creaking chair. “When will you go?”
“At first light. Before I leave, I’ll need to draw replacements for my personal guard from your garrison.”
“I’ll escort you personally,” General Otaxx said. “Evil things will be roaming the plains, now that Beryl’s army has been scattered. It isn’t safe for you to cross alone.”
5
The huge, vaulted cavern was carved in steps of concentric rings that climbed down to an oval stage at the center, but the air was so thick with smoke that it was impossible to see the opposite side of the arena and nearly impossible to see the stage from its topmost steps. Dwarves of every clan and family crowded the steps, some sitting, many standing and shouting, not a few snoring drunkenly on the rough stone floor. The acrid smell of sweaty unwashed bodies competed with the reek of pitch torches and the stomach-roiling odor of the heady alcoholic beverage known as dwarf spirits. The unmistakable ratwarren-stink of gully dwarves lay like an foundation beneath the other smells, pervading everything, much as the gully dwarves themselves lay everywhere, under everything, in the midst of everything and usually in the way, despite the curses (and worse things) hurled their way.
In the center of the arena, two dwarves battled. Stripped to the waist, their beards bound by leather cords, the pair exchanged bone-crushing blows as fast as their fists would fly. Heavy booted feet tore divots from the hard-packed dirt floor as they fought. Swearing and spitting teeth and blood, the two battlers parted for a moment to catch their breath, their pale, naked hacks heaving for air and glistening with sweat in the smoke-dimmed torchlight. All around them, the crowd roared in approval, stamping their hoots in thunderous applause that seemed to shake the very foundations of the cavern. The two dwarves stared at each other with hate-filled eyes for a moment longer.
Then one snarled, "Theiwar pig!"
"Daergar worm!" the other shouted, launching himself in a sudden wild leap that took the Theiwar by surprise. The first dwarf ducked, only to catch the heel of the other's boot under his bearded chin. His knees buckled and he sat down then toppled over nosefirst into the dirt.
Half the arena erupted in wild screams of delight. The other half, having lost their wagers, stared grimly for a few moments before demanding an opportunity to win back their money on the next fight. A door at the edge of the sunken arena floor opened, and several dwarves rushed out to drag the limp body of the defeated away and to help the victor stagger out, his arms weakly lifted above his head in victory.
"That should settle that old feud once and for all," Thane Jungor Stonesinger said to his morose companion. The thane of the Hylar dwarves sat in his personal box high above the arena, out of reach of the unruly, jostling crowd of common dwarves. With an amused smile creasing his luxuriously groomed beard, he extended his left hand, palm upward, and wiggled his fingers.
To his left sat a short, dour dwarf with skin the color of a fish's belly. His cinnamon-brown beard was plaited and rolled into two thick coils beneath his chin and bound with thin copper wire. His black cloak barely covered the vest of studded leather armor he wore. Snarling, he dug into a pouch at his belt and produced a fistful of steel coins. With obvious reluctance, he counted them out onto the thane's palm, and each clink of a coin seemed to stab him through the heart.
"Why do you always side against the Daergar in these matters?" he asked petulantly when the last coin was counted.
"I do not always side against the Daergar. I simply do not allow clan loyalties to cloud my judgment," Jungor said with a smile as his fingers closed around the untidy stack of coins. "Your Daergar cousin was overmatched. Anyone could see that, even you, Ferro. No one forced you to accept my wager."
He passed the coins over his shoulder to the tall, grimfaced dwarf standing behind him. "Hold these for me," Jungor said without turning.
"As you wish, my thane," the captain of Jungor's personal guard answered, quickly
pocketing the coins.
Ferro Dunskull scowled at the tall Hylar warrior standing protectively behind his thane, one massive fist resting on the broadsword at his hip. Captain Astar Trueshield was from one of the most respected Hylar families in Norbardin, Tarn's new city. He bore the long golden beard of a high dwarf of that clan. He returned the smaller, paler Daergar's scowl with a haughty sneer.
In the arena below, two new combatants entered to a round of thunderous applause and roars of laughter. The first warrior bounded across the arena floor, a long sword twirling from fist to fist in a brilliant display of swordsmanship. The powerful muscles of his arms rippled beneath skin already glistening with sweat. His strong, white teeth shone in a fierce grin through his short-cropped chestnut beard. He wore a vest of mail over his broad back, and his stout legs were clad in leather greaves.
Behind him slinked a miserable creature clad only in rags and dragging a spear far too long for him to wield with any effect. At the sight of him, the crowd howled with laughter and shouted, "Ong! Ong! Ong!" the noise resounding like an iron bell in this deep subterranean cavern. At the sound of his name, the gully dwarf grinned and waved, and he tried to heft his overlong spear in salute to the crowd, only to topple over with its weight. The unruly mob of spectators only howled more loudly than ever, and he seemed encouraged by their noise, jutting out the tangled nest of his filthy beard and strutting cockily a few steps before tripping over his own feet.
His smile broadening, Jungor leaned closer to Ferro Dunskull and shouted over the noise, "Ah, this ought to be interesting. Yon Daewar warrior is Uurk Straightbeard. He claims that his opponent, the gully dwarf named Shnatz Ong, cheated him at dice and refused to return his money. He has demanded an arena confrontation according to Tarn's Law of Redress outlawing unsanctioned revenge killings."
